Blur icon Alex James has spoken to NME about ambitious plans for his 2026 ‘Britpop Classical’ tour, which sees him covering the likes of Pulp and former rivals Oasis with a full orchestra.
- READ MORE: Graham Coxon on the return of Blur: “We can’t leave it too long because we’re knocking on!”
The bassist and cheese/wine maestro this month announced big plans to take his orchestral celebration of the ’90s on the road for the first time in 2026, after premiering the show at his Big Feastival event this summer.
James will be bringing the biggest hits of the Britpop era to life with a full live orchestra, rock band and chorus, along with special guests including Phil Daniels (of ‘Parklife’ fame’) Saffron of Republica and Gary Stringer of Reef – along with more “big surprises”.
Explaining how he happened on the idea almost by accident after a headliner pulled out of his Big Feastival and ‘Ministry Of Sound Classical’ stepped in to top the bill, James said that the shows were actually quite serendipitous to come at a time when there’s such a hunger for Britpop amidst its Blur, Pulp and Oasis-driven resurgence.
“Is anything 90 minutes of hits? Not even ABBA Voyage, but I watched ‘Ministry Of Sound Classical’ and it blew the roof off,” James told NME. “It was 90 minutes of hits and I couldn’t believe it. I got in touch and said, ‘We could absolutely smash this with a Britpop version’.”
He continued: “Britpop is just like wine,” laughed James. “Everyone’s going, ‘Ah yes, the ‘95!’ We had our work on to get it down from four and a half hours of hits.”
Check out our full interview with James below, where he told us about putting the setlist together, what ‘Britpop’ means to him, having to learn Oasis covers after once being rivals, and hopes for the future of Blur.
NME: Hello Alex James. How has it been for you entering the classical world after years in rock ‘n’ roll?
Alex James: “For most bands, nothing ever gets written down in music. I can read music just about, but it takes a while! I had to learn it all. You get one rehearsal with the orchestra just because the cost of the huge production and studio. There were tubular bells, harps, oh my God – I was absolutely cacking it. I think we were about halfway through [Radiohead’s] ‘Creep’, which is really beautifully orchestrated, and I noticed I was crying. That’s when I thought, ‘OK, this might just work’.”
Radiohead are an interesting choice. How do you define Britpop and how did that inform the setlist?
“It’s anything I fucking say it is! The Wannadies are in there and they’re from Sweden. I had a great night out with Pär [Wiksten, frontman] on the last Blur tour. There’s not much in there that’s contentious. The show is broken into suites. It opens with just the band waking everybody up with all the heritage stuff where all the influences came from: the classic ‘60s songwriters, a bit of Kinks, a bit of Who, a bit Beatles, a bit of Bowie, a bit of T-Rex. It’s all over in three minutes, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM.
“Then the lights come on for the orchestra and there’s this real crescendo that builds into *BAM* ‘Riverboat Song’ by Ocean Colour Scene and it’s fucking game over. There’s a really good mash-up of Blur’s ‘Song 2’ and Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, which is just crazy with an orchestra. There’s another Elastica and EMF one that works really well.
“There’s a high-energy suite, and a Manchester suite, a feel-good suite, then the orchestra get their chance to shine with ‘Creep’ and [The Verve’s] ‘Bittersweet Symphony’. By the time you get to the sing-along suite towards the finale, you could hear 60 per cent audience and 40 per cent band.”
Which songs work best with the strings?
“There are a couple of big Pulp bangers that come off well with an orchestra, and Oasis. The Oasis stuff took me ages to crack. The groove on ‘Wonderwall’ is fucking genius. It was a wonderful thing to devote a bit of patient study to that body of work.”
Did you listen to much Oasis back in the day, what with the Battle Of Britpop and all?
“Yes, I went to see them a lot. There was one tour where our paths kept crossing. That often happens. The first time we toured America, it was The Sugarcubes whose paths we kept crossing. Damon [Albarn, frontman] is still really close with Einar [Örn, singer]. We were always the last ones left in the last bar that was open where we went, and there was one tour in America where we criss-crossed with Oasis. I remember seeing them in San Francisco.
“It’s magnificent, what they’ve done with this reunion tour. It’s been overwhelming and brought so much joy to so many people around the world.”
Last year you said you wouldn’t be going to any Oasis shows. Did you keep your promise?
“I didn’t go, no, but I’ve keep abreast. I bumped into Andy Bell [bass] a couple of weeks ago and I was raving about ‘Wonderwall’: ‘Jesus, it took me ages to crack that one’. He was like, ‘Mate, I had to get the stems’. It’s brilliant.”
Did he give you any one-on-one tuition?
“No, but it’s like doing a jigsaw. It’s really satisfying to spend time with all these songs. The bass tends to be what ties them all together. I was listening to the charts on Friday to take my daughter somewhere. I hadn’t listened to the charts for ages. It’s like the high street, it’s just dominated by ever-bigger brands. You look back to the ‘90s and it was little independent acts. We do ‘Ready To Go’ by Republica and Saffron [singer, and guest on the ‘Britpop Classical’ tour] still smashes the shit out of that one. That was the slowest sleeper hit ever but it’s never gone away.
“A lot of these songs mean more to people now than they did when they had their first flush. Obviously there’s a strong nostalgia element to it, but there’s more than that. My kid was having a party during half term, I stuck my head in to make sure no one was dead and they were all listening to ‘Bittersweet Symphony’. What surprised me about the last Blur tour was how many of my kids’ mates bought tickets and came to the shows.”
Both the last Blur tour and the Oasis reunion gigs have attracted new generations in the audience – could that be because they don’t have a Damon or a Liam?
“It’s true, it’s true – but it wasn’t just Damon, Liam and Noel. We had Jarvis [Cocker, Pulp] and Gaz [Coombes, Supergrass] and a host of others. It seemed like endless riches in different styles and genres. There’s something wonderful about bands. It probably suits the industry to have less bands.
“It’s gone back to a pre-rock’n’roll model before The Beatles, when it was big Hollywood Studios with big bankable stars like Doris Day and Julie Andrews. A big one is bigger than ever before, but there just aren’t any medium or small ones. All this Britpop stuff started really, really small.”
And yet here we are – with once tiny indie bands now steeped in history
“A lot of these bands have split up or hate each other – some of them are no longer with us. I’m coming at it from an angle of what will really rock a room. The band are really bob-on, the orchestra give it a whole new dimension and the singers treat it as a chorus. There’s not a Noel or a Damon impersonator. There’s enough there to make it authentic and for it to feel like a covers band. These songs have all become little worlds of their own. It just works.”
Does the fact that you’re covering ‘Wonderwall’ mean that you have to send Noel a royalty cheque?
“Oh yeah. We do.”
Have you had any feedback from the artists you cover?
“Well Travis were on the bill at Feastival and I asked them to sing on [Blur’s] ‘The Universal’. They absolutely loved it. We’ve only done one show, but it hasn’t been difficult in getting the original artists to get involved. I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but don’t expect Damon or Liam!”
Has playing the Blur numbers given you the yearning to get the band back together again?
“Do you know what? That last tour was the first time where there was no fucking downside. With the warm-ups and playing the new album at Hammersmith, there were less than 20 shows. Even when we split up, it was only for eight years. It reminded me of how much I love being on tour. It reminded me that playing the bass is the one thing I’ve ever done proficiently well in my entire life. With everything else, I’m blagging it.
“We were lucky. We had 15 years to learn a craft. Blur wouldn’t happen because Damon doesn’t need a bassist or a guitar player, let alone a drummer. You can do all that on your phone. ‘ChatGPT, write and play me a bassline’. There is something magical about a bunch of lairy, boozy kids making a racket in a band. ‘Britpop Classical’ is trying to capture that spirit.”
We spoke to guitarist Graham Coxon last year and he said you’d best reunite again sooner rather than later as you’re all “knocking on” a bit in years…
“Have you seen the new [Spinal] Tap film? They’re getting on. I need to get one of those cheeseboards on my bass. As long as we like doing it and we don’t overcook it, then there’s no reason to not keep doing it. It would be a lovely thing to think we could keep on doing it until at least one of us is dead. It’s such a tragedy that so many bands split up and end up alienating from their biggest records and not wanting to do the hits. I’m here to solve all those problems. Hits: we got ‘em.”
The last two Blur albums – ‘The Magic Whip‘ and ‘The Ballad Of Darren‘ – but felt quite vital…
“Oh I was cacking it on my way into the studio on the first day, because I literally couldn’t think of a single band that didn’t hate each other by the time they got to their ninth album. I also couldn’t think of a decent ninth album!
“I saw a really lovely clip of Johnny Marr talking about Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, saying that when he listened to them playing it sounded like friends. To me, ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ just felt really relaxed, composed and accomplished.”
Do you think there’s another Blur album to be made?
“It’s always been like, ‘Oh god, what’s going to happen?’ ever since our first rehearsal. We wrote ‘She’s So High’ at our first rehearsal, and we were still playing it 35 years later. There’s always been this chemistry and it always seems to work. The hardest thing is getting us all in a room together, but when we are in a room together – wow.”
Do you have the time, the want and the inclination to form any other musical projects outside of ‘Britpop Classical’ and Blur?
“This just kind of happened, and that’s the way the best stuff always happens. You realise you can’t not do it. There are new generations that want to see this stuff. Going to gigs has become the new ‘grand tour’. They don’t want to go to Rome and Versailles, they want to go to Glastonbury and Roskilde.”
Could ‘Britpop Classical’ become something that you tour every year?
“It’s just like with Blur: if there’s a demand for it and it’s fun, then why not?”
As well as being announced for Latitude 2026, the full list of ‘Britpop Classical’ tour dates are below. Tickets are on sale now and available here.
Alex James’ ‘Britpop Classical’ 2026 UK tour dates are:
MARCH
11 – Royal Albert Hall, London
12 – Symphony Hall, Birmingham
14 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
15 – Brighton Centre, Brighton
17 – Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
18 – O2 City Hall, Newcastle
19 – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
21 – Sheffield City Hall, Sheffield
JUNE
13 – Guildhall Square, Southampton
18 – Lincoln Castle, Lincoln
28 – Llangollen Pavilion, Llangollen
JULY
17 – Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Scarborough
19 – The Piece Hall, Halifax
24 – Dreamland, Margate
26 – Latitude Festival